What Bullets Do
by MotorcycleChickenSmile
Summary: Oneshot. Jack and Marla at Marla's apartment immediately after the final scene...pointless and fluffy. Rated for language. Reviews make me smile!


_A/N; My second Fight Club fic! Kind of just a pointless drabble, but it was fun to write. Hope you like it._

_Disclaimer; Don't own Fight Club, not getting paid to write about it._

_What Bullets Do_

I'll say this for the space-monkeys. They may be a bunch of deranged, misguided, glycerin-happy finger-puppets who get a fifth-grade-mentality jimmy out of watching things explode…but they know how to cover a guy's ass. Not only did they get Marla and I out of the building; they got us all the way to her apartment without a single confrontation with a cop, which is really saying something, considering the veritable three-ring circus of cherry-tops and ambulances and fire-trucks that were all parked outside the explosion sight. Of course, knowing Project Mayhem, it would probably be a pretty safe bet that most of the cops and firemen and paramedics working the sight are all on Tyler's payroll. Or they would be, if Project Mayhem paid it's monkeys.

Anyway. It took a lot of convincing to get them to leave me alone once we were at Marla's building. They all kept asking to come in with me, stay with me, make sure I was ok. In the end I more or less had to order them to take off. I'm pretty good at ordering them around, I've discovered. Another one of the unmentioned perks of having a split personality who's evidently the world's biggest badass.

Anyway. They're all gone now. It's quiet in here. Quiet. For the first time in a long while, I can appreciate the quiet. For a minute I let my eyes close, and my head drifts back. I sink down a little further in the chair. It's warm in here, too….

"Hey," a raspy smoker's voice sounds from just above me. My eyelids open a crack. I'm looking down Marla's cleavage.

"You ok?" she asks quietly, actually sounding like she really means it. She's bent over me. Her hand touches my forehead. I smile.

"It's not a fever."

"Should I be keeping you awake or something?"

I smile wider. "It's not a concussion either. It's a bullet wound. They're a little different."

"Smartass," Marla mutters, standing up and moving away. She crosses the room and lights a cigarette, inhaling deeply and shooting the smoke in a beeline up toward the ceiling. She sighs, paces around for a few minutes, then drops onto her bed. She looks down at the floor.

I wince. I pull away the gauze that the space monkeys gave me and look at it; it's soaked with blood, useless now.

"Marla," I croak, and my gurgling words seem to rip the torn flesh open again. Fresh blood trickles down the side of my neck, steaming hot until it hit's the air and turns ice-cold.

Marla looks up. "Jesus, Tyler!" she cries, dropping the cigarette on her bedspread and jumping up. "What the fuck are you trying to do, kill yourself??"

"Gauze," I stammer, trying not to touch the hole with my tongue and make it worse. "Gauze…"

"Here," Marla snaps, bending over me again and pressing a towel against my cheek. I grimace in pain and emit small gasping noises. "Suck it up," Marla hisses. I take the towel from her. It smells like mold. It's got stains on it. They probably _are _mold.

"Thank you," I manage, closing my eyes against the throbbing pain. Tip for the future…when shooting oneself in one's face, tilt gun barrel towards the front of one's cheek, not the back. That way the jaw movement won't jar the wound as much.

"I still don't understand what the fuck is going on here," Marla says beneath her breath, snatching up the cigarette which has already burned a tiny hole in her bedspread. She pats it cautiously with her hand. She looks up at me, glaring. "Are you going to tell me what's going on, or not?"

"Marla," I say quietly, holding the towel and looking at her through pleading eyes. "You wouldn't believe me."

"Try me. I think I'm just about to the point where I'd believe any bullshit you threw at me. I just watched five skyscrapers come crashing down all around me. I think at this point I'm a little jaded."

I close my eyes. I smile. "Do you have any tape?"

Marla growls in frustration, standing up and storming over to a drawer. She rummages for a few minutes, then pulls out a half-used roll of duct tape and pitches it at me. It hits me in the groin. I groan and convulse for a second, then gingerly pick it up.

"Thank you," I gasp.

"Yeah. Go fuck yourself with it."

Good old Marla.

I couldn't have asked for better tape, though. Duct tape…it truly is a marvel of human invention. The space monkeys went through rolls of it like toilet paper. I tear off a long strip, wad up the towel, pressing it firmly over the bullet hole, and I tape it on. I wind the strip completely around my head, securing it under my chin like a mumps bandage. I don't even care how much hell it's going to be later when I have to get it out of my hair. Hair doesn't seem terrifically important right now. I don't know…it's strange. Shooting yourself in the mouth does something to you. It kind of calms you down permanently, gives you a Zen implant. And I had thought the volume of my life got turned down after joining _fight club_…hell, I should have just foregone the whole damn Tyler Durden fiasco, gone out and bought a Glock, and plugged myself in the face months ago. It would have saved me so much grief.

The towel taped firmly in place, I get up from the chair. The room kind of sways a little…I think I may have lost more blood than I thought. It's soaked completely through the left sleeve of my T-shirt. I remember for the first time in a while that I'm not wearing pants. My pants are back in that interrogation room where the undercover Project Mayhem monkeys posing as cops ripped them off me when they were trying to cut my balls off with a rubber band and a knife. God. Just remembering that makes my knees buckle. Fucking hell…what kind of deranged maniac comes up with stuff like that? A rubber fucking _band? _

Oh, wait…yeah. I thought of that.

Marla is sitting on the edge of her bed, legs crossed, arms folded, cigarette hanging from her mouth. She's intentionally not looking at me. I cross the room and sit down next to her, looking down at my hands. What do I say to her? What can I say, after everything I've put her through?

"Marla," I say quietly. "I--"

"You really fucking scared me, you piece of shit," she cuts me off, whirling around and looking me in the eye. I look back, mouth open, no words coming out. "I mean you _really fucking _scared me. Do you have any idea…_any idea…_what's it like to walk up and see someone with a goddamn bullet hole on the side of their head?"

My memory shoots back to an image of Bob…my friend Bob…laying on a table in the kitchen of Paper Street Soap company, his brains dripping out of his head and landing on the floor.

"Yes. I do."

"Shut up, smartass!" she almost screams at me. "You know, Tyler, that's your biggest problem right there. Whenever anyone tries to say something serious to you…whenever someone tries to get close, you have to be funny. You have to be clever."

"Marla, listen, I--"

"No, _no, you _listen to _me, _now. I want to know what's going on with you, Tyler. I want to know right now."

I look at her. Her eyes are narrowed, her mouth is set. Her skin…her pale skin, the dark circles beneath her eyes, the burgundy lipstick. The hair, dirty, ratty, going everywhere. God. I can't look away. She's beautiful. Those lips…just look at them…

"Are you listening to me?? I said I want you to _tell me what the fuck is going--"_

I cut her off. I grab the back of her head and pull her towards me and cut her off with my lips over hers. I kiss her…_deep. _I realize it's the first time I've ever kissed her…_me, _kissing her, not Tyler. She tastes like smoke. I knew she would. I smile into her mouth.

Marla struggles and pulls away from me. I open my eyes. She's glaring…more than glaring, she's seething.

"It's a fucking good thing you've got that hole in your face, because otherwise I'd slap your ass straight back to First Methodist!"

I smile. Then I do it again. This time I kiss her so hard she falls backward on the bed, and I land on top of her. She fights again, thrashing around, and rolls me off to the side. We look at each other, me breathing a little hard.

"Didn't you fucking _hear me? _I swear to God, Tyler, if you even--"

And again. I like this…kissing her when her mouth is already open is like skipping a step. Sounds like some fun fact Tyler Durden would have come up with, but it's true. This time, she doesn't fight as much. In fact, after a few seconds, she stops fighting at all. Slowly, she puts her hands around my neck and kisses me back.

I'm not wearing pants. My underpants have blood on them. I have a dirty towel duct-taped to the bullet hole in the side of my face. My skin is caked in dried sweat. And approximately an hour and four minutes ago I pulled the trigger on the end of organized society as we knew it. And it's the damnedest thing. I've never felt more serene.

After a long moment, Marla pulls her lips away from mine and looks at me, her fingers pushing through my hair.

"I don't understand, Tyler," she whispers. "I don't understand any of this."

"You know, Marla? It's funny. I don't think I do either."

"But…what happened to all those buildings? The explosions? Who were all those people who got us--"

"Marla. Listen to me. Someday…I don't know when…but someday, I promise, I'm going to explain everything to you. But right now…"

I look into her eyes, and my voice trails off. I'm not sure what's happened. All of a sudden I think I'm going to cry. Unshed tears burn behind my eyeballs like acid. I close my eyes, willing them away. I feel Marla's hand on my face, the back of her finger, stroking gently.

"You're one fucked up son of a bitch, you know that?"

I laugh. I sniff. The tears burn worse. "Believe me, you don't know the half of it."

"Just tell me one thing, Tyler," Marla whispers gently. She leans forward and rests her forehead against mine. "Why did you do it? Why the hell did you shoot yourself in the face?"

I open my eyes, and we're so close together Marla looks cross-eyed. I smile.

"I needed some clarity."

"Clarity?"

"Yeah."

"And you couldn't just take some yoga? Get a colon cleansing or something? You needed a _bullet in the jaw _to give you _clarity?"_

I kiss her once, briefly, and pull back. "Yeah, Marla. That's what bullets do. They make everything clear."

Marla closes her eyes and shakes her head, a difficult task considering one side of her face is pressed against the bed sheet. I suddenly notice something; the little burn-hole from her cigarette is right between our faces, tiny wisps of smoke rising up from it and drifting between us.

"Clarity," Marla whispers.

"Clarity," I repeat. "It's what they do."

"So tell me then, Tyler. With all this newfound clarity…exactly what is it you think you're more clear about?"

"You."

Marla blinks. Her face changes, her dark eyes become quizzical. But she's curious. I can see it.

"Me. What about me?"

"I think I love you."

Her mouth opens. She's frozen for a second. She looks like she's going to talk, but no sound comes out. I smile. I laugh a little bit. Marla's mouth closes and she narrows her eyes at me.

"You love me."

"Yes. I really think I do."

She blows air through her lips, making the _pbbbbft _sound.

"Well. That's your fucking issue then."

I smile. I kiss her, she kisses me back. She rolls on top of me. The cigarette burn is next to us. Pretty soon the police are probably going to find me. If they don't I'll turn myself in. That'll all get taken care of tomorrow. But for right now, I can stay right where I am.

Beneath Marla and the cigarette burn. Between Marla and the bullet hole. All wrapped up in sweet, sweet clarity. A little more blood seeps from the hole and Marla's kisses go deeper and deeper. It hurts like hell. But at the same time it feels amazing.

Two things in one. Pain and clarity. And love…three things.

It's just what bullets do.

For me, at least.

A/N; Yeeeeaaahhh…..I know this was short and kind of pointless, but I had nothing to do for an hour and I really wanted to write another Fight Club fic. Maybe I'll write one that has actually has some plot to it soon…a longer sequel to this one, perhaps? Who knows. Reviews make me smile!


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